THE imperious Jason Crump reigned supreme to lead Australia to the inaugural Ove Fundin trophy as winners of the Speedway World Cup final in Poland on Saturday night.

The Kings Lynn start completed the tournament unbeaten as the Aussies lifted the crown ahead of a battling host nation in the fervent atmosphere of the Olympic Stadium in Wroclaw.

Crump completed his 10th win out of 10 during World Cup week when he took the chequered flag in the final race after Polish rival Jacek Krzyzaniak was excluded after coming off on the first turn.

The Poles had made up a mid-meeting 10-point deficit to lead by one going into the final race, but having the inexperienced Krzyzaniak lining up alongside Crump, Tony Rickardsson and Billy Hamill left them badly exposed.

Australia's expected shoot-out with Sweden instead unfolded into a desperate scramble to see off the Swedes and the mounting challenge of the Poles.

The Swedes did well to recover from a nightmare start. First Jimmy Nilsen suffered an engine failure leading into the final two turns of the opening heat - gifting Crump victory ahead of a badly-impeded Krzysztof Cegielski - and then Mikael Karlsson was excluded for exceeding the two-minute time allowance in heat two.

Australia, the tournament favourites, led Poland by 10 points after heat eight, but the Poles almost overturned that in one swoop when Tomasz Gollob came in as a tactical joker to win heat 10 in a re-run, his four points doubled to eight.

Poland had dropped back to third behind Australia and Sweden - Coventry's Andreas Jonsson winning both his opening races for the Swedes - but Gollob took heat 13 to leave them only two points adrift of the Aussies.

Crump's third and fourth wins of the night - and his eighth and ninth on the trot in the event - opened up what appeared to be a decisive nine point lead over Poland after 17 races, with Sweden six points behind.

While the Swedes faded from the picture, Poland refused to accept defeat, and a sequence of four wins and two second places in the next six races gave them a two point advantage with two races left.

Heat 24 saw Polish rider Sebastian Ulamek crash into Denmark's Hans Clausen on the first turn, and in the re-run he was taken from behind by Australia's Leigh Adams to leave just one point separating the teams ahead of a nail-biting and what turned into a controversial final heat.

Krzyzaniak, muscled to the back of the field, came down on the apex of the first two turns and English referee Tony Steele bravely excluded him as being the sole cause of the stoppage, much to the chagrin of the massive Polish crowd.

It left Crump needing only third place or better to take the title, and he duly powered away from Rickardsson and Hamill to spark some wild Australian celebrations.

Hamill, on an engine borrowed from Sam Ermolenko, had won his first race in heat two on his unexpected comeback from a hand injury, but Greg Hancock had a subdued night and USA trailed in at the rear of the field after being overtaken by a slow-starting Danish team.